


Honor Thy Fallen and Shout Their Names From The Stars

by flamethrower



Series: Re-Entry: Journey of the Whills [54]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: A new hope, GFY, Gen, Rogue One - Freeform, my feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 10:29:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8887456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flamethrower/pseuds/flamethrower
Summary: The first thing Wedge Antilles ever learned about Luke Skywalker is that if the man says he's going to do something, he really is going to do it. It's great except for when it's terrifying, but mostly it's great.





	

**Author's Note:**

> SO MANY SPOILERS. GO WATCH THE MOVIE FIRST AND THEN COME BACK HERE.
> 
>  
> 
> Set in Re-Entry because I say so, but stands alone just fine.

The problem with living on Yavin IV, Wedge reflected in annoyance, was that the base was amazingly massive and impressive right until you needed to find someone. Then it was just a pain in the ass.

He considered the public channels and dismissed the idea. He wasn’t sure if the announcement would drive his quarry to ground or not, and stars, this was hard enough as it was.

Wedge finally found the man he was searching for, but everything he’d come to say died on his lips as he witnessed what Luke Skywalker was doing. “Are you—are you _shooting_ your medal?”

Luke was sitting on the floor of one of the stone hallways, far from the bustle of a Rebel base trying to figure out how to efficiently bug out without leaving anything behind. He looked up from his messy slouch and blinked at Wedge like he was seeing an apparition. “Well…yeah. What’s up, Wedge?”

Wedge opened his mouth and tried not to wave his arms around in helpless flailing, like his sister used to do when utterly confounded. “Well, I had this great apology lined up for why I didn’t show for the awards ceremony, but then I find the hero of the hour _shooting at his medal_ and now I’m out of words.”

Luke fired another shot at the medal pinned to the opposite wall without looking at it. Wedge wanted to be surprised—really, he _really_ wanted to be surprised, but the kid from the boonies had just blown up the damned Death Star. Wedge decided that accurate target shooting without looking was probably on the minor side of things he needed to worry about. Besides, it wasn’t like a blaster shot was going to do much damage to the metal those heavy things were made of.

Wedge was startled out of his evaluation of the bronze metal when Luke tossed something at him. He reached out and caught it on reflex, the weight heavy and warm in his hand. He looked down to find a copy of the medal Luke was shooting at, engraved with his name, the date of the battle, and an etching of what looked like a sun going nova.

“Want to shoot at yours, too?” Luke asked him in complete seriousness.

That was how Wedge Antilles ended up sitting on the floor next to Luke Skywalker, each of them taking accurate potshots at medals they apparently both hated. It wasn’t what Wedge thought he’d be doing an hour ago, but it was damned therapeutic.

“Why didn’t you show?” Luke asked, but somehow Wedge knew it wasn’t a judging question. They were shooting their medals, after all.

“For everyone who couldn’t. It seemed disrespectful. I lost—” Wedge’s voice broke. “I lost a lot of friends yesterday, and in the battle over Scarif a few days before that. I wasn’t there for Scarif—Wes, Biggs, Hobbie, and I were off on another assignment for General Dodonna, trying to entice more Imperials into jumping ship.” He shot the medal again. It expressed how he felt nicely. “Why did you actually go through with it?”

“When I was a kid, my aunt used to tell me stories,” Luke began, lowering his blaster to the stone floor. “They were tales of heroes, of people who did the right thing, every time, even if it meant they might die. Heroes were supposed to be these people who understood right from wrong like it was instinct. Heroes always lived to see the end of the tale.”

Wedge eyed him. “Is that what you think you are?”

Luke snorted, shaking his head with a faint, wry smile on his face. “No. I’m just a farmer who can fly well and shoot straight. I used to repeat what my uncle said—that we didn’t need to have anything to do with the Empire, that the battle between the Empire and the Rebellion was a long way from Tatooine.

“Then the Empire came to Tatooine, destroyed my home, and killed the only family I had.” Luke lifted the blaster and shot the medal again. “I didn’t climb into an X-Wing because I wanted to be a hero, Wedge. I got into that fighter because I didn’t want anyone else to find out what it’s like to lose everything.”

“Mine’s gone, too,” Wedge offered. “Family, I mean. Parents when I was younger, and my sister is either dead, or…loyal.”

Luke nodded. “I went through that award ceremony for the people on the ground, Wedge. While two wings were up in the air, there were thousands of people down here, holding their breath while they waited to find out if we could save them. They needed that ceremony a hell of a lot more than I did, or you did—I think the only one of us who got a medal who _needed_ it was Han, but he needed a nice reason to be a little less cynical.”

“Right,” Wedge said noncommittally. He didn’t know enough about Captain Solo to decide one way or the other, but it was nice that a fellow Corellian had shown up just in time to make sure Luke didn’t die. Intelligence was pretty sure that Solo had shot Vader’s customized TIE fighter, too, which was a nice bonus. They didn’t have confirm on Vader’s demise, but the bastard was probably still alive, as usual.

“Scarif—that’s the battle that got us the Death Star plans, right?” Luke asked.

“Yeah. Lost most of the Fleet protecting the team on the ground long enough for them to get the Death Star plans transmitted off the planet. Then the Death Star turned their own Imperial base into dust.”

Luke stood up, surprising Wedge so much that he took Luke’s offered hand and let the other man pull him to his feet before he'd even thought about it. Luke grabbed his medal from its place on the wall, collected Wedge’s, and then turned around, a serious look on his face. “Tell me about them—the team on Scarif.”

“As long as it hasn’t been deconstructed for the bug-out, I can do better than that,” Wedge said.

Wedge took his new friend to one of the quieter halls in the temple. Names, photos, dates—the memorial stretched from the beginning of the hall and went on and on, starting with the martyrdom of the Jedi twenty years ago and continuing until present day. Wedge knew the fallen for the Battle of Yavin hadn’t been added yet, but Scarif had.

Luke paused only once, right at the beginning. “Anakin Skywalker,” he read, staring at a slightly blurred photo of a man with dark brown hair and laughing blue eyes, grinning like a land shark at someone out of frame of the flatpic.

Wedge looked at the expression on Luke’s face, some weird blend of haunted and worshipful. “Never knew him, huh?”

Luke slowly shook his head. “I didn’t even know what he looked like. Do you think anyone would mind if I got a copy of that later?”

Wedge shrugged. “I don’t see why not. Come on.”

He took Luke to the very end of the long memorial, and just in time—people were arriving to begin breaking it down, starting at the beginning, section by section. “Here. Their call-sign was Rogue One.”

Wedge watched as Luke’s eyes flickered over each photo. Some were just grainy stills captured by the base’s surveillance cameras; others were mugshots from Imperial facilities or Imperial employment files; the rest were from official Alliance files, those in Intelligence who’d served the longest.

“The ground team’s idents are the only ones up yet,” Wedge explained. “The Fleet’s loss was just…they’re still trying to figure out who’s still alive and who’s not.”

“Rogue One,” Luke said in a soft voice. His gaze tracked photos and names again, but slower, like he was committing them to memory. Luke was the kid of a Jedi Knight—maybe he was doing exactly that.

Wedge looked at them again, too. He’d known some of them for years, others for a few days, and some not at all.

 

Erso, Jyn, Sergeant; Rank Confirmed Posthumously

Andor, Cassian, Captain; Alliance Intelligence

Îmwe, Chirrut; Sage of the Whills, Jedha

Malbus, Baze; Guardian of the Whills, Jedha

K-2SO; Alliance Intelligence

Rook, Bodhi, Pilot; Alliance Intelligence

Erso, Galen; Confirmed Martyr for the Alliance to Restore the Republic

Gerrera, Saw, Commander; Partisan Forces

 

“Jedha?” Luke asked, before Wedge could keep reading. It was easy to get lost in the list—it was so gods-cursed _long_.

“It used to be a Jedi Temple of some kind, back during the Republic. The Whills were some kind of guardian badasses. The city of Jedha was Tarkin’s first test of the Death Star. Scarif was test two.”

“And Alderaan to confirm it was a planet-killer.” Luke reached up, and before Wedge realized what he was doing, he’d found a corner of the frame for the last section to hang his blaster-singed medal from.

Wedge looked at the medal in his hand. He didn’t want it; he hadn’t earned it, not when he’d had to peel away from the battle like so much useless mynock trash. He swallowed and then copied Luke’s gesture, hanging the medal by its fabric cord on the other side of the Scarif Memorial’s section.

“The people taking this down so it goes with us,” Luke said, “they’ll make sure the medals go too, right? They'll stay in the right place?”

Wedge nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, they always do.”

“There’s a quote next to Erso’s name.” Luke stood on his toes to see the picture highest on the memorial. “ _Rebellions are built on hope_. Huh. Good advice.”

For some reason, Luke’s words sent a chill down Wedge’s spine. “Whatcha thinking, Boss?”

“Rogue Squadron.” Luke glanced at Wedge. “We’ll be Rogue Squadron. For them. For everyone who should have been standing with us today.”

It felt right. It felt like a weight on Wedge’s chest had been lifted away. “Well, I’m Corellian,” he said, letting a slow smile cross his face. “We’re kind of good at being rogues, Boss.”

“Boss?” Luke repeated, baffled. “That was just—”

“Luke. You’re the man who heard the plans for fighting the Death Star and believed we could do it. I didn’t, and if you hadn’t had that faith, I would have kept on not-believing it until the damned thing killed us all. The man who’s Lead should be the man who believes we can do this.”

“Fine.” Luke smirked at him. “Then the man who’s in the Two seat should be the one who’s willing to tell Lead that his ideas are stupid.”

“Okay,” Wedge agreed. “But this idea? Not stupid, Rogue Leader.”

Luke smiled. “We’ll have plenty of chances to prove people wrong, Rogue Two.”

 


End file.
